The inventor of Baileys and some of the world's most renowned drinks brands has shared the secrets of what makes a product a bestseller or a flop.

David Gluckman, who also invented Princess Diana's favourite soft drink, Aqua Libra, said he spent 48 years in the drinks industry waking up every morning and asking himself the question: 'How am I going to be able to come up with a truly unique idea for a new brand?'

Now he's turned a lifetime of knowledge into a book called That Sh*t Will Never Sell, which lifts the lid on why some brands are an instant hit and why some fail.

These are his 10 secrets to success - and it could be worth taking note if you're an aspiring entrepreneur.

1. KEEP IT SIMPLE

David Gluckman invented Baileys in London in 1973. Now 82 million bottles of the drink are sold every year in over 160 countries

We always tried to reduce briefs and problems to simple statements. The key to the creation of the wine brand Le Piat D’Or was that UK wine drinkers back in the 1970s wanted wines that they could remember, when going into a shop.

French wines were high quality but their names were too complex for non-French speakers and their labels were too understated.

The Singleton was a single malt whisky aimed not at the 3 per cent of drinkers who drank single malts back in 1984, but the 97 per cent of people who drank blended whisky.

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The higher up you go, the better the chance of success. Whenever we worked to a brief issued by executive decision-makers, we had a better chance of moving with speed.

Middle marketing management were more preoccupied with the process. Ideas took longer, research was endless and cost a lot of money.

People who commission ideas should have the power to green light and enable their implementation.

3. STICK TO THE BRIEF

Baileys is Gluckman's biggest success story but the author, who worked in brand development for 48 years, also invented Aqua Libra, Ciroc Voda, Tanqueray No Ten, and Smirnoff Black

The ideas that worked were based on one solution to a brief [from a drinks company].

This was another function of dealing with top people. They were invariably business people and wanted to see 'the answer', not the process which enabled you to get to the answer.

To those people, we were expert, we were trusted and we were accountable – important elements in the progress of innovation. Fail and you’re out.

4. DON'T ALWAYS TRUST MARKET RESEARCH

We always had a healthy disrespect for market research and treated it with the circumspection it deserved.

One of our great successes, Baileys Irish Cream, wasn’t a hit amongst consumers, so we ignored the findings.

Our feeling was that consumers ‘like what they know’ but do not always ‘know what they like’. Innovation is about getting people to try and adopt new things.

5. RE-VISIT OLD MARKET RESEARCH

Again, on the subject of market research, your first port of call on any development programme should be the databank of previous market research you have undertaken.

Companies own massive caches of research which are rarely revisited. A more pragmatic approach to research will save companies huge sums.

6. MAKE IT EXCELLENT AND DIFFERENT

David Gluckman was born in 1938 and worked in the drinks industry for 48 years

Product excellence was always at the core of everything we tried to do. Vodka is required by law to be ‘odourless, tasteless and colourless’ which is a difficult framework within which to innovate.

Two vodkas were created against that backdrop: Smirnoff Black was formulated to be perceptibly smoother than any other vodka and Ciroc was the first vodka to be distilled from grapes, not grain.

Tanqueray Ten was the world’s first gin distilled with fresh botanicals, delivering a fresher, cleaner-tasting gin product. They were all perceptibly differentiated from their competitors.

7. DON'T COMPETE WITH A HUGE BRAND

When competing again huge ‘mega brands’ like Coca-Cola, Bacardi or Red Bull, for example, it is better to compete with ‘part’ of those brands than all of them.

Given a requirement to develop a white rum to compete with Bacardi, the conclusion was that Bacardi had almost universal appeal. Gluckman’s response to the brief was to develop a white rum aimed directly at men.

To achieve that aim it was higher in strength, drier in taste and sourced from a more ‘macho’ location, Australia.

8. WIN OVER YOUR CLIENT

In innovation, it is essential to ‘get the politics right’. There are no absolute criteria for success with product ideas.

The first rule of success is to get the client to own the idea. Once an idea leaves the building, it becomes the property of someone else.

And the more that person/company takes ownership (preferably the senior people), the more successful the brand will become.

9. FOCUS ON WHAT YOUR PRODUCT DOES

The modern fashion is to focus on communicating emotional benefits for brands. Our aim, even with premium spirit brands was to deliver a functional benefit.

Le Piat D’Or worked not only because it was memorable, but because the product was appropriate for UK tastes at the time - in the 70s when wine-drinking was a new experience.

It was an easy-drinking red wine and its taste was the same bottle after bottle and year after year.

The Singleton tasted smoother than traditional Scottish single malts, making it an easier transition for blended whisky drinkers.

10. TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS

Sometimes you have to trust instinct and good judgement on the way to success. Aqua Libra was one of the iconic brands in the UK in the 1980 (Princess Diana even rated it as one of her two favourite all time drinks – the other was Champagne).

It succeeded in spite of not being researched at all, having a taste that was not for everyone and having a tiny advertising budget. The protagonists and more importantly the client, ‘knew it when they saw it’ and went ahead. There have been many other brands in the past that worked that way.

That Sh*t Will Never Sell: A Book About Ideas By The Person Who Had Them is out now by Prideaux Press, £25.